North Lancashire League round-up: Top three open up gap at the top

In the Baines Bagguley Penhale North Lancashire and District Football League Premier Division, the leading three teams all won and opened up an eight-point gap over fourth-placed Ingleton.

Carnforth Rangers made hard work of beating bottom club College AFC, it took goals from Phil Meeks and George Henderson to see off the College challenge.

This win leaves Carnforth three points behind second placed Caton United and four points behind leaders Galgate.

Caton travelled to play an inconsistent Storeys, who played well but not quite well enough to break down the Caton defence.

Caton at times were sluggish but battled their way to another win after leading scorer Nathan Jackson and young Sam Kirkby scored to give them a hard earned 2-0 victory to trail leaders Galgate by one point.

Galgate had the toughest game when they entertained a Bentham side looking to bounce back from two defeats.

It took Galgate until the 17th minute before they had their first shot at goal which went just wide with the keeper scrambling to cover it.

After another attack down their right wing Galgate had an excellent chance to take the lead but the experienced Steven Stirzaker somehow managed to head the cross from Will Onek over the bar from six yards out.

The second half started with Galgate putting the pressure on the Bentham defence and created two half chances in the first five minutes.

Bentham’s defence looked decidedly shaky in the opening minutes and another Onek cross again found the head of Stirzaker but again his close range header went well over the bar.

In the 57th minute Bentham had a good chance to take the lead but the shot went over the bar from 12 yards.

The excellent Onek was next to miss a great chance when on the hour mark he broke through Bentham’s defence but shot straight at the keeper.

Within 60 seconds Onek was again at his best and with the defenders standing watching his pass to Stirzaker found the centre forward eight yards from goal and this time he beat the keeper who was static to give Galgate a deserved 1-0 lead.

Galgate took control of the game for the first time with just 10 minutes remaining and should have wrapped the game up when they created four good chances.

It took until the 85th minute before Galgate had the game sewn up when man of the match Onek got the goal he thoroughly deserved.